Biosecurity expert David R. Gillum’s work featured in Science magazine

David R. Gillum is the senior director of Environmental Health and Safety at ASU. He co-authored “Promoting biosecurity by professionalizing biosecurity” in the February 2020 issue of Science magazine. 

The article underscores ASU’s leadership in the field of biosecurity and provides ASU access to policy discussions on how to ensure biological research is performed securely. 

The content impacts how biosecurity is managed at ASU and also may encourage more biosecurity research and funding. The work of Gillum and his co-authors supports university efforts to host more biosecurity conferences that bring industry leaders and professionals to campus.  

Additionally, Gillum’s article may transform and support ASU Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions curriculum. Watts offers the biosecurity and threat management concentration within its master’s degree program in emergency management and homeland security. The degree is designed to assist professional development aimed at meeting these types of current and emerging challenges. 

The path to conceptualizing a biosecurity credential began six years ago when Gillum attended a safety and security meeting at the International Genetically Engineered Machine or iGEM Jamboree in Boston. Discussion led to the need for standardized knowledge about biosecurity, especially as it related to synthetic biology, and a means to validate that knowledge. 

Following the meeting, Gillum was elected to the council of the American Biological Safety Association International. He co-chaired a task force with Science article co-author Barbara Owen, for two years. Owen and Gillum assembled more than 40 industry representatives to develop a biosecurity definition and held discussions about how to build a well-trained biosecurity workforce. Around the same time, Gillum began working closely with FBI Phoenix, which has co-sponsored the Arizona Biosecurity Workshop at ASU for the past four years. These workshops revealed and worked to address a knowledge gap between biosafety professionals, law enforcement, and those working in facilities where biological operations were occurring.